Worcester Sharks' victory comes at small price

The Sharks are hoping that they didn’t wind up minus-2 after their 5-1 victory over Portland last night. Both John McCarthy and Brodie Reid were injured, although initial indications are neither player will be out long term. McCarthy was tripped up by Mark Louis and slid hard into the boards in the first period.

The Sharks are hoping that they didn’t wind up minus-2 after their 5-1 victory over Portland last night.

Both John McCarthy and Brodie Reid were injured, although initial indications are neither player will be out long term. McCarthy was tripped up by Mark Louis and slid hard into the boards in the first period. He came back for a brief shift in the second, but quickly headed back to the dressing room.

Sharks coach Roy Sommer said that McCarthy may have suffered a bruised tailbone and is not expected to play this afternoon.

Reid, who has four points in three games since returning from a separated right shoulder, landed on that shoulder after a fight with Darian Dziurzynski and left the ice favoring the shoulder. He said after the game he did not think it was re-separated, so perhaps he will be back relatively quickly.

Tim Kennedy did not score a goal but had three assists. He has been impressive in games against his old team, the Pirates, since joining the Sharks midway through last season. In 11 games for Worcester versus Portland, Kennedy is 6-12-18 and has at least one point in 10 of those games.

They are in disguise this season, but the Syracuse Crunch are not fooling anybody. Syracuse is picking up almost where its 2011-12 predecessor, the Norfolk Admirals, left off.

Last season’s Admirals won the Calder Cup and finished the regular season with an incomprehensible winning streak of 28 games. During the offseason, Norfolk switched National Hockey League affiliates, and its players moved to Syracuse. With the NHL in a lockout, the players that were unbeatable after Feb. 10 of last season are mostly together again in upstate New York this year.

After its 4-1 victory in Albany last night, Syracuse is 11-3-2 this year, meaning Crunch players have gone 39-3-2 in their last 44 games.

Syracuse is the Sharks’ opponent here at 3 this afternoon.

Since the surge started last winter, the Admirals/Crunch have been unbeatable on the road. They are 8-0-1 away from home this year and were 13-0-0 during the season-ending streak last year. That adds up to 21-0-1.

Syracuse will arrive at the DCU Center having won four of its last five. It will be the Crunch’s third visit here to play the Sharks. Worcester won both previous meetings.

On one of the game’s first shifts, with Joel Rechlicz on the ice for Portland, Sommer rolled out some serious muscle on the Sharks’ side. He had Jimmy Bonneau, Frazer McLaren and Curt Gogol up front with Matt Pelech and Taylor Doherty on defense.

Taking Doherty out of the mix, the other four Worcester skaters on that shift had 1,127 penalty minutes in 392 games combined. By the end of the night, it was 444 PIM combined for those four.

Nick Petrecki (hand) and Jon Matsumoto (upper body, but not a concussion) did not play due to injury. Petrecki has missed seven games and Matsumoto four. Travis Oleksuk and James Livingston were scratched. With Livingston out, Bonneau played his fifth game of the season, the last three of which have been against the Pirates.

It was a Friday night sweep.

As the Sharks were beating the Monarchs in Manchester, the two teams’ ECHL affiliates played in San Francisco, and the San Jose farm club also came out on top.

With Marek Viedensky, Daniil Tarasov and Mikael Tam in the lineup, and Thomas Heemskerk in net, the San Francisco Bulls beat the Ontario Reign, 5-1. Viedensky was 2-2-4, plus-3 and had 12 shots on goal. In his first five games with the Bulls, Viedensky is 4-4-8 and plus-4.

In their two previous meetings before Friday night, the Reign had beaten the Bulls twice by combined scores of 15-1.

McLaren played in his 200th Sharks game. He is the 10th player to reach that plateau. … The four-game road winning streak that Worcester extended in Manchester on Friday night has returned the Sharks to .500 all-time on the road. They are 107-107-32 away from the DCU Center. … Livingston has gone 21 games since his last goal, which was last March 18 versus Bridgeport here. … The victory was the Sharks’ first on Saturday this season. They improved to 1-4-2. … One of the referees was Chris Brown, and one of the Pirates players was also Chris Brown.

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